I am about to buy new internal HDD with 4TB capacity as second drive (e. g. I do not need to boot from that drive). I want such capacity because I will use it mainly for storing (and processing with Avidemux) DV-AVI files from (traditional) DV camcorder and for backup my files from primary drive.

I have tried to figure out all things related to 2TB limit. But the more articles (Wikipedia, Western Digital, Seagate sites and others) I read the more I am confused. Maybe this is also because English is not my native language. Also information at WDC and Seagete are mostly Windows oriented (manufactures' tools, too). Therefore I would greatly appreciate if someone knowledgeable can confirm or correct or supplement summary bellow. Also practical experience/guide from users having such HDD under Puppy are welcome. I think many others will also be interested as HDD larger than 2TB are quite common nowadays.

1. Scenario A: 2 x 2TB partitions on drive - using "traditional" MBR
I would prefer to have one 4TB partition (scenario B) but this may simplify many things. This scenario should work on (almost) any reasonable recent Puppy version (32 or 64 bit) - is it true?
- Even so, should I pay attention how to align each partition? (and if yes, how exactly?).
- I know that MBR can have up to 4 primary partitions. But anyway, should I create just two primary partitions or should I create 1st partition, then logical partition and second partition inside this logical partition?
- Any other issues related to that scenario?

2. Scenario B: 1 x 4TB partition - using GUID Partition Table (GPT)
- Linux supports GPT also on PC with traditional BIOS
- But this is not clear at all. Can 32 bit Linux also access such partition? Or is 64 bit version (like FatDog) necessary?

3. Puppy version, kernel version, GParted version, others
- Which Puppy and kernel versions are necessary for Scenario A or B?
- Which version of GParted is necessary and which version are in major version of Puppy (like Wary/Racy, Slacko etc.)?
- Boot loader version with support for GPT is not important for secondary drive? Is it true?
- Are all HDD larger than 2TB currently on the market using 4KB sectors but present it to OS as 512B (so called Advanced format: 512e version)?
- Any other program are needed in specific version?
- Any other issue I am not aware of?

4. My current hardware and software
- My PC is neither new or very old (about 3 year old).
- Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM, AMD780G
- Memory: A-Data DDR2 800 MHz, 2 GB (in single chip), processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850+, HDD WDC WD10EADS (= 1 TB)
- Puppy version: I still use Quirky (not new 5.x) most of the time (it simple works very well... ), I also use Slacko Puppy (5.3 for some reason): mainly when I need to do some statistics in R. I do plan to switch to some newer version of Puppy but it is related with lot of work. Maybe the new HDD will be the ultimate reason for the upgrade.

It takes a lot of time to type up this size post especially if English is not your first language.

I hope you get some meaningful answers from it

My only thought on this was a suck it and see approach .
What have you got to loose ?_________________Neither my Family nor my Property are Government issues. Governments should do what they were designed to do Manage the larger issues best done by Governments
To stop corruption give them 3 times the penalty. Get their agreement on first employment.

Buy two and set up a RAID0
I've lost trust in WD large harddirves due to them just stop working. Fatdog 64 has support for LVM drive setups, but I'm not able to test those.

I have seen a trend on using puppy with massive sized hard-drives, and I do not understand. This seems miss-matched. I would suggest using a server type linux like redhat/fedora they already worked out the bugs, and support many modes of harddrive using large drives.

You can always use puppylinux as a virtual machine image on the other distro, best of both worlds.

Actually Ted, all hard disk drives are inherently unreliable. They're like helicopters that way. Yahoo or Google or someone like that made a report on their experience with using mass-market hard disk drives (instead of much more expensive SCSI drives, which were claimed to be more reliable than EIDE drives but I doubt it.) Their experience was that drives lasted an average of about two years, if I remember right. I don't think it made a whole lot of difference which brand. Of course, their drives are never shut off until they fail.

My experience with hard disk drives has been very bad, so I only use them for archiving. Figuring that a spinning mechanical contraption like a hard disk drive will last longer if it only spins when I want to use it, instead of spinning whenever the computer is on, I got one of those docks you install in a computer where a standard internal DVD drive would go. A standard SATA drive plugs into it. The dock manufacturer said it was hot-pluggable, but Windows does not know I plugged a hard disk into it until I reboot. Puppy sees it right away.

Now, I've installed Windows XP in a small (32 GB) SSD and use that. If it gets full I plug a 1 TB SATA hard disk into the dock and move what I want to save into it.

Yes Flash I barely use my harddrives or windows any more. Actually today all my HDs are connected with Fatdog64 (about 4T total) and my new pack of Blurays to back them up. Already cleared one small 120G HD and using windows to reformat it clean of crude.
Next is a 300G seagate...

Its freakishly COLD here in TX today.. Using my compjuters as space heaters.

Yes Flash I barely use my harddrives or windows any more. Actually today all my HDs are connected with Fatdog64 (about 4T total) and my new pack of Blurays to back them up. Already cleared one small 120G HD and using windows to reformat it clean of crude.
Next is a 300G seagate...

Its freakishly COLD here in TX today.. Using my compjuters as space heaters.

I'm just wondering what "Fatdog64" and "Bluerays" are here?
Wondering if I could get some use out of them

I realise Fatdog 64 is the Puppy 64 bit release but don't get what you mean by connecting all your hard drives under it ?

Bluerays to me are just more expensive DVD's
I have a half dozen 300G drives sitting idle atm and am not happy with all the backup DVD's that I can never find stuff on
Ditto on the Windows use

I got over to Florida aboyt 2 yrs ago hoping to get out on the Everglades in one of those Airboats. Florida being the warm place that it is . When we went out to look the wind off the swamp was so cold and so fierce we turned round and went back to shop at Costco. Biggest surprise was that everyone in LA spoke spanish so it seemed. Now they tell me 80% have a gun. I shoot too but over here we have to jump through many many hoops to own one , firing it is still problematic after all that.
So regardless of weather I think I might come back and stay_________________Neither my Family nor my Property are Government issues. Governments should do what they were designed to do Manage the larger issues best done by Governments
To stop corruption give them 3 times the penalty. Get their agreement on first employment.

Thanks very much for the reply Ted Dog I really appreciate your effort -not !_________________Neither my Family nor my Property are Government issues. Governments should do what they were designed to do Manage the larger issues best done by Governments
To stop corruption give them 3 times the penalty. Get their agreement on first employment.

I'm just wondering what "Fatdog64" and "Bluerays" are here?
Wondering if I could get some use out of them

I realise Fatdog 64 is the Puppy 64 bit release but don't get what you mean by connecting all your hard drives under it ?

Bluerays to me are just more expensive DVD's

None so blind they say and how come you are attempting to answering for him ? Has he broken his typing finger?_________________Neither my Family nor my Property are Government issues. Governments should do what they were designed to do Manage the larger issues best done by Governments
To stop corruption give them 3 times the penalty. Get their agreement on first employment.

If you didn't want anyone else to join in the conversation, you should have sent a PM. :)

Don't take this as criticism of your writing skill, I just can't figure out what your question is.

Hmm , first comment on blindness still applies

Let him answer for himself anyway . I don't want to PM him or you .
Whoever joins in the "conversation "? is of course most welcome to do so. I see this forum as a board on which to post questions and on which hopefully answers are suggested. I'm not in a "conversation" with anyone.

I post my question here because it is pertinent to the thread as I am sure you know._________________Neither my Family nor my Property are Government issues. Governments should do what they were designed to do Manage the larger issues best done by Governments
To stop corruption give them 3 times the penalty. Get their agreement on first employment.

Mysp - You have a lot of questions there but they are well laid out. I suspect they won't get answered one by one here, and that you will have to piece together the 'jigsaw puzzle' by using the forum search functions. Best of luck to you.

I think we have a similar issue in that in my case I am running fatdog64 (version 620) but I cannot get it to boot to a primary partition on my Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB HDD if the partition table is of the GPT format rather than the MBR format.

We both need to use GPT to avoid the issue of hard drive sector translation in the hard drives firmware from 4 kilobyte sectors natively to 512byte emulation (because as I understand it the MBR partition table type does not support 4KB sector hard drives.) If emulation occurs then apart from notable slow downs in transfer performance of large files, there is also as I understand it an issue of more fragmentation and inefficient use of total storage space. May someone please correct me if I am wrong...

I gave up trying with a GPT Partition Table, and installed with MBR with which fatdog64 boots fine. In fact it starts up at around 3-5 seconds! It is fantastic in this regard, but the problem still looms of needing to get it working with GPT for my longterm use.

Mysp has alluded to a big clue here on why this may be happening which is that of lack of support in the bootloader version. Now as the talented authors of fatdog64 had to do some tricky stuff to get it working with UEFI bios's then maybe something was altered or left out of the relevant version of GRUB bootloader ?

tytower - in answer to your question about what does running all the hard drives "under fatdog64" mean, I think the other poster simply meant that they are connecting all their old hard drives taken from other computers into their new one physically using its IDE and SATA ports (presuming the motherboard supports both) and cleaning up all the old file sets across them.

---

Nice to be here on murga linux finally. I look forward to contributing._________________My opinions are not necessarily my own.

Welcome and Thanks for your reply to me
I thought there may be something useful going on there. I have probably 20 old hard drives with some files on them I want to save and I have not learnt RAID yet so my only use at present is as magnets for my tools._________________Neither my Family nor my Property are Government issues. Governments should do what they were designed to do Manage the larger issues best done by Governments
To stop corruption give them 3 times the penalty. Get their agreement on first employment.

It would have been far more interesting were the original poster bothers to come back and responds to the thread he (or she) started.

Many MBR bootloaders will not work with GPT partition. GRUB and Grub4Dos in Fatdog64 definitely won't boot GPT partition. You can use GPT partitioned-disk (GPT disk), but they are not (in general) bootable unless you have UEFI machine.

According to this, syslinux can boot GPT disk, but I haven't tried myself. Please note that bootability of GPT disk in a BIOS machine vary widely, depending on many factors including your BIOS and the bootloader.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum